ESTHER McVEY as prime minister would strike fear into the hearts of disabled people across the country, a leading disability rights activist said today.

The comments follow Ms McVey’s declaration that she “would be going forward” as a potential successor to Theresa May, arguing that the Tories need a leader who “believes in Brexit.”

Disabled People Against Cuts founder Linda Burnip told the Morning Star that the “cruel, vicious, downright nasty” former work and pensions secretary had been the “most ruthless” of all Tory ministers in cutting disabled people’s social security payments.

Hate crimes against disabled people rose 51 per cent in 2018 and Ms Burnip said Ms McVey’s attitude could be linked to increasing attacks.

The hard-right Tory ideologue offended so many people as minister for disabled people in 2012-13 that her appointment as work and pensions secretary in 2018 provoked a 20,000-strong petition demanding her removal.

She compared benefit sanctions that have led to vulnerable people starving to death to a teacher giving a pupil detention, declared rising dependence on foodbanks “positive” and vowed to remove disability benefits from 300,000 people — yet told last year’s Conservative Party conference that cuts were “fake news” spread by the Labour Party.

The ex-minister was also forced to apologise to Parliament for misleading it by claiming the National Audit Office had called for the universal credit roll-out to be sped up when in fact it had said the opposite.

She lost her Wirral West seat in 2015 following the Morning Star’s revelation that she had named two non-existent companies as her landlords when claiming up to £1,830 a month in rent expenses, but was parachuted into the safe Tatton seat vacated by George Osborne in 2017.

Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd said today that the government would stop issuing financial sanctions of longer than six months on claimants.

The Department for Work and Pensions had applied penalties that could be in force for three years.

But shadow work and pensions secretary Margaret Greenwood said the Tories should “scrap the punitive sanctions regime.”

“Six months is still a very long time to leave someone without any income at all. It is not just the individual who is affected, but their family too.

“There is clear evidence that sanctions and excessive conditionality do not help people into sustained employment. Labour will scrap the sanctions regime for good.”